God Grew Tired of US, Cultural values & Local Refugees

“Your calling is found where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” – Frederich Buechner

Recently I facilitated a sociology conference where we had a keynote speaker discuss refugees. 

James Hardan from the World Relief Fund discussed them for us:

Immigrants choose to leave but refugees are forced.

The road to refugee:

Flee homeland, leave everything behind, find temporary shelter (avg stay is 5 years) sometimes living in forest for extended time

Interview with UNHCR; often involves reliving the events

Wait for acceptance and nation to accept you

US resettles 50-60% of worldwide refugees

If accepted, go wherever you are sent and be prepared to pay back airfare costs!

26 million refugees worldwide.

50-80,000 refugees accepted to US each year

$900 given to each refugee to make it through first 3 months!

IL is 7^th largest recipient of refugees

UNHCR – US Dept state – IOM Travel logistics – Resettlement Services

Worldrelief Services:

Initial resettlement

Employment Services

Education Services/ESL

Refugee Counseling Services

Youth Services

Volunteer and Church Relations

Citizenship and immigration Legal Service

Challenges:

Educational factors: ESL and lagging academics

Family and Cultural Dynamics:

Parent child role reversal

Lack of parental involvement in students’ lives

Lack of parental involvement in school

Different parenting styles and discipline

Past and Current Trauma/stress:

Past trauma and identity crisis

IL refugees:

Bhutanese

Ethnic Lhotsampa

108,000 people displaced

Imprisoned, abused, denial of human rights

Iraqi

Very different from Bhutanese

Recent refugees, short term

Kids have seen and experienced more turmoil than Bhutanese
Here is a video showing you the life in a refugee camp in South Asia:

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I want to examine the refugees for cultural differences, especially cultural values.  Often, we are so surrounded by our own culture that we cannot see that it is a social construction and there are other realities that exist.  So, after watching the movie God Grew Tired of Us and reading The Values Americans Live By written by Kohl, reflect on these questions:

1.  Individually, react to the Kohl reading.  What are some of the values that Kohl mentions that you easily agree Americans have?  What are some specific examples that you can cite from your own life that show these values shaping either you or your parents or another example?

 

2.  Pick your best example of how these values are at play in The United States or at SHS or in your own life.  Take turns sharing each person’s best example.  Oldest person in the group goes first.  Write down the values that others share and their example:

3.  As a group, identify values that are contradictory to U.S. values from the film God Grew Tired of Us.

4.  Look at the list of values that Americans hold.  Identify American values that might compliment each other.  These are called value clusters.  List them here:

Value Cluster: ­­­­­­­­­­­________________________________________________________________________________

Now look for American values that might contradict the other American values.  These are called value contradictions.  List them here:

Value Contradiction: ________________________________________________________________________

5.  Do you think Americans value happiness?  Why? How?

Deviance both positive and negative

Deviance is the repeated or serious violation of society's expectations. What is expected by society varies depending on where you are and when you are there. For example, cell phones used to be unacceptable at any school function just a matter of years ago. Now, I see students wearing cell phones on their waists and they are not perceived as deviant. It should be noted though that deviance doesn't just have to be negative. Check out this story from NPR:

A Victim Treats His Mugger Right
Julio Diaz has a daily routine. Every night, the 31-year-old social worker ends his hour-long subway commute to the Bronx one stop early, just so he can eat at his favorite diner.
But one night last month, as Diaz stepped off the No. 6 train and onto a nearly empty platform, his evening took an unexpected turn.
He was walking toward the stairs when a teenage boy approached and pulled out a knife.
"He wants my money, so I just gave him my wallet and told him, 'Here you go,'" Diaz says.
As the teen began to walk away, Diaz told him, "Hey, wait a minute. You forgot something. If you're going to be robbing people for the rest of the night, you might as well take my coat to keep you warm."
The would-be robber looked at his would-be victim, "like what's going on here?" Diaz says. "He asked me, 'Why are you doing this?'"
READ THE WHOLE STORY OR LISTEN TO IT HERE.

What a crazy story. What do you think about that?


Here's another example of a former SHS teacher who quietly and secretly gave money to a homeless man on the CTA and someone else caught it on camera.  He posted it and it went viral.


So this brings me to the idea that deviance doesn't have to be negative; you can violate the norms of society by doing something positive, such as paying for the toll of a stranger, giving away money (even just a dollar) to someone who doesn't ask for it, offering to carry a fellow student's books/bag for no reason, etc... For your next experiment try violating a norm in a positive way. Try an act of positive deviance. How does it make it you feel? How hard was it to do? How did others react to you? Here are some suggestions from the Randomn Acts of Kindness(RAK) Foundation for RAK at school (yes this is a real organization). And here are some suggestions for individuals doing RAK in the community.  And here is a link to 35 pictures of people doing positive acts of deviance.

Here is my favorite story of positive deviance:

If you have some extra time here is a great story about positive deviance and a baseball all-star game: